Introduction

ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero Wi-Fi review
ROG Z390 with a new eight-core Coffee Lake-S processor

In this review, we look at the premium Coffee Lake-S eight-core processor platform, with the ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero Wi-Fi. We will test the motherboard on the new eight cores, sixteen threads proc. A motherboard that looks gorgeous and carries some interesting features as well. Typically the Hero series are a bit more budget aware but come with that ROG flavor, and that can only mean good stuff. You'll agree with me that this dawg has great looks and all the features you probably seek for a Z370/Z390 motherboard platform. The motherboard has been fitted with the usual suspects, including a Gigabit based Ethernet jack and on the board you may house two M2 SSDs. Right, let's test the new Coffee Lake platform.

With the new Coffee Lake-S refresh you can expect three processors predominantly become popular in demand for the PC gamer, as each and every one of the processors will offer fantastic gaming performance if your graphics card is fast enough. Intel is able to boost the Turbo frequencies towards that 5 GHz domain. And that is a big advantage that Intel has over AMD, which is wedges shut at that 4.2 GHz range with Ryzen 2000 (which is overall really good, but the high per clock core is where it matters in CPU bound gaming; e.g. with super high-end graphics cards like the RTX 2080 Ti).  Intel is releasing these three 9000 series processors initially:

• Core i5-9600K (6 Core / 6 Threads)
• Core i7-9700K (8 Core / 8 Threads)
• Core i9-9900K (8 Core / 16 Threads)